Simon Slangen

The contacts synchronization feature on my smartphone prompted me to get my contacts in order. I was rewarded for this effort a few months later when that same cellphone started breaking down, and decided to do away with all of my data — emails, contacts, applications — the whole lot of it. Restoring it all from the cloud took a measly five minutes.

And yet I’ve never been able to get my contacts sorted out on my Mac. I guess I don’t like Address Book. Even after the most recent overhaul, it really isn’t fun to use and above all else does not feel integrated; it feels like a standalone application, and such a basic and essential tool simply shouldn’t. An address book should be unobtrusive, yet at your fingertips when you need it. It should be like Cobook.

Cobook

Cobook is a simple and lightweight application that installs to your Mac OS X menu bar and integrates with you social media accounts. Click on the icon and a beautiful little pane unfolds with your contacts. The cursor is immediately focused on the search bar to filter and search through this list. Click away, and the contacts pane is hidden, but it remembers what contact you were viewing the next time you open it.

It’s quite similar to a lot of menu bar applications, but to me, this is how a Mac address book should work.

Note that Cobook does not actually replace Address Book; it’s just a prettier way to access this old rot. New contacts will be added to Address Book in the background, and new additions to Address Book show in Cobook.

This also means that you can synchronize Cobook with external contact management services like Google Contacts, or with iCloud, by synchronizing these with Address Book. Your Mac offers rudimentary synchronization functionality in System Preferences -> Mail, Contacts & Calendars, or you can use a third-party application.

Social Media Integration

On its first launch, you can integrate Cobook with Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. If you’re not on any social networks, go right along. Cobook works like a charm without social media integration, but you’ll be missing out on a few benefits as well, such as added profile pictures and information for your existing contacts.

There are three ways to synchronize with each of these account, and you can specify your choice on a per-account basis. The first, most timid way would be to manually add new profiles to your address book. The middle option only adds profiles for existing contacts. If you’ve already got your important contacts in your address book, this is the way to go. The third option lets you go all-out, and will import every single connection in your address book. If there’s no pre-existing address book entry, a new entry will be created.

Slick Contact Representation

Once you’ve passed set-up and the optional clean-up, you’re good to go. Type in the search box at the top to refine the selection in real-time (search buttons are obviously for pussies). You can search on the contact’s name, address, telephone number, or any other information attached to the contact.

Hovering over the contact opens a new pane, showing you most, if not all, of the contact information. You can stop here, or click on the contact to open the contact in the central pane. In this mode, you can show the contact’s Twitter feed, or information from Facebook and LinkedIn by hovering over those links.

At the top of the pane are a few buttons to interact with the contact. Use these to compose a new email, edit the contact information, or put the contact in your favorites.

The most interesting feature here is the call button. By default, this button will ‘zoom’ on the number. This is done by dimming your screen and plastering the number over the full width of it, as shown below.

However, you can customize these actions in the preferences pane of the application. For example, you can customize Cobook to call the number in Skype upon pressing the call button, or to try to reach the contact through your Mac’s own FaceTime.

How do you keep your contacts sorted? Let us know your tips and tricks in the comments below!

It’s easy to get branded as a Mac fanboy. I’m not. I just happen to love brilliant tech products, which led me to the Mac. It’s also what led me to purchasing one of those new Windows Phones. If you’re reading this article, I guess you did too, or are considering to.

Let me tell you, it’s not the most obvious path to take. Microsoft is not exactly notorious for playing nice with Mac OS X. When I purchased my first Zune, Microsoft seemed blissfully unaware of the existence of other operating systems. The only way to sync that lovely media player was by leaving behind your trusted old Mac and finding a Windows computer to sync with.

Luckily, Microsoft seems to have embraced the future and cross-platform goodness that comes in the wake of it. Working with a Windows Phone from a Windows or Mac homebase still has its differences, differences that do come to show, but Microsoft has done a good job with Mac support this time around.

Windows Phone 7 Connector

Wrought in Microsoft’s own forges and available for free on the Mac App Store, Microsoft’s little helper comes in the form of Windows Phone 7 Connector. A lengthy title for a relatively simple application.

Its role is twofold. First, to integrate with Mac OS X and run to and fro to keep your precious media synchronized. Second, to search for new updates, and push them to your Windows Phone when spotted.

Media Synchronization

For most people, the most important of these features will be media synchronization. You’ll be pleased to know that Windows Phone 7 Connector makes friends with your native Mac OS X applications. No, it does not offer another bulky iTunes alternative. Rather, it let’s you manage your media in iTunes and iPhoto, and employ Windows Phone 7 Connector solely as a synchronization agent. A good move in my eyes.

Hence, you’ll find your media in as good a shape as you left your original collection. You can select playlists, artists, or genres to sync your music; albums, events, titles to sync TV series and movies that were purchased through iTunes, and even Faces to sync your pictures and self-made videos. Note how you can select all items from one of these categories to keep these continually up to date on your Windows Phone.

Selecting Browse Device in the sidebar shows you the media content present on your device. Here you can preview these files and clear the clutter away. The Import Selected Items button is an especially refreshing sight; these files will not be locked on your device.

Ringtones

A lovely feature is the Ringtones pane. Not a major highlight so much as a fun and interesting addition. While Windows Phone 7 Connector is in the process of rummaging through your music, it will set aside certain tunes that it deems especially fit to serve as ringtones.

Ringtone-compatible, according to Windows Phone 7 Connector, means the file is not much larger than 1MB, has a duration of less than 40 seconds, and is not protected by any digital rights management.

Not a Zune Alternative

Windows Phone 7 Connector is a charm of an application and a wonderful addition to Mac OS X, but does it serve as a fully fledged alternative to Zune — the Windows go-to software? The short answer is no, it does not. On Windows, Zune does all the things described above, and more. Apart from synchronization, it’s a strong looking media player, albeit a bit on the heavy side.

However, the feature that’s missing most is an integrated App MarketPlace, a way to download applications on your computer and push them to your phone. App management is limited to what you can do on every internet-enabled computer. Windows Phone 7 Connector refers you to the online App MarketPlace by opening it in your browser. You can then browse the catalog on your computer, and send a link to your Windows Phone by email or text message to download the application over there.

What features do you think should be added to Windows Phone 7 Connector to provide better Mac OS X integration? Or do you think the application is fine as is, and would only become too bloated otherwise? Have your say in the comments!

The wait for subtitle downloads has become a far too common annoyance. Everyone is ready to get watching, and I’m still looking for the proper subtitles. Foreign films aside, you may still consider those subtitles a way of reassurance; a place to fall back if you didn’t understand a certain dialect or a mumbling extra in the movies.

There are apps galore that will help facilitating this simple task; on Mac OS X as well as Windows. Most prominent of these is SubDownloader, but I’ve found the GUI version to be painfully slow and taking almost as long as firing up your browser and searching for subtitles manually.

Last week I set out to find a better tool. Queue SolEol, an application that can be set up in such a way that downloading subtitles takes but a meager few seconds.

SolEol

SolEol is a simple, light-weight application despite its 24 MB download. It was developed on and for Intel Macs, but can be downloaded for Linux and Windows as well, albeit without being thoroughly tested by the developer.

As you can see in the screenshot above, the interface is a no-brainer. Once running, you can drop your files on the download button to search for movie or series subtitles. You can also use the application to share your own subtitles by dragging the subtitle files on the upload button after adding your OpenSubtitles.org user credentials in SolEol’s preferences.

Downloading Subtitles

You can set the preferred subtitle language, or languages in the SolEol preferences. SolEol can search subtitles for individual, or a large batch of video files. For the latter, simply drop the entire folder in SolEol. First select the video files for which you want to search and hit ‘Search Subtitles’.

After a few seconds, SolEol will have finished searching and (hopefully) matched subtitles to all of your videos. After SolEol has finished searching, select the subtitles you want to download. If you’re searching subtitles for a more obscure language or release, it’s a good idea to preview the subtitles before downloading. To do this, right click on one of the subtitle results. When you’ve refined the results, press download to add the subtitles to your video folder.

Tip: Drag And Drop On The Go

Using SolEol as outlined above works like a charm. However, if you’re often downloading subtitles on the spot, there’s a better way; you can configure SolEol to search and download subtitles instantly upon drag-and-drop.

First, go the the SolEol Preferences pane and make sure the options ‘Search immediately on drop‘ and ‘Download chosen sub automatically‘ are selected. If you haven’t already, you might also want to check ‘Rename Subtitles as Movie‘, or ‘Rename Movie to “Proper” Name’, which will do the same in reverse.

Now, drag and drop the SolEol application icon to your Finder bar. That’s it. The next time you want to search for a subtitle, just drag and drop your video file onto the SolEol icon in your Finder bar, and the primary search result will automatically be downloaded to your video folder and renamed accordingly.

What day-to-day things do you automate on your computer, and how? Let us know in the comments below!

I recently made the switch from Google Android to Windows Phone 7. Although the calendar application (like the rest of the mobile platform) is much slicker and easier to use, the contrast in support for Google integration is noticeable. I should add that Microsoft is not really at fault here. They’ve done as well as they could in providing account integration and synchronization for their competitors’ products. Kudos for that.

Sadly, some things need some additional tweaking to get them to work properly. For me this was the Google Calendar synch. You can add your Google Calendar account to your Windows Phone rather easily. However, by default your Windows Phone does not synchronize multiple calendars. Here’s how to fix this, and enjoy all Google Calendar goodness on your Windows Phone without purchasing any third-party synchronization applications.

Step One: Add Your Google Account

Before we get started, you should add your Google account to your Windows Phone. If you’ve done so already you can skip this step. Otherwise, go to settings and select email+accounts in the System tab.

In the email+account tab, select add an account. Enter your Google username or email address and password and allow your Windows Phone to do an initial Google calendar sync.

Step Two: Sync Your Calendar

With your Google account added, we first need to allow it to synchronize your Windows Phone with Google Calendar. From the email+account overview, select your Google account. If you haven’t renamed this yet, it should simply go by the name ‘Google’.

In your Google account settings, under content to synchronize at the bottom of the page, make sure Calendar is checked. With these preferences, your Windows Phone will already synchronize with Google Calendar. However, if you have more than one calendar associated with your account, only the primary calendar will be synchronized. To rectify this, we need a little help from Google.

Step Three: Google Sync Preferences

Using your Internet Explorer on your Windows Phone, go to “http://m.google.com/sync/“. If all is well, you should see the name of your phone, or simply ‘WindowsPhone’ at the top of the page.

Important: in some cases, you will receive an error message telling you that ‘Google Sync is not supported’ on your phone. Even if you’re using a valid smartphone! If you’re viewing the page in a language other than English, change the language to English (US) for the moment.

After selecting your phone, you’ll be able to specify which calendars you want to synchronize with your Windows Phone, by selecting up to 25 calendars under My Calendars. For all casual and even most professional users, this should suffice.

To view these calendars, your phone should again synchronize with your Google account. You can wait until this happens automatically, or go to the email+accounts page, long press on your Google account and select ‘synchronize’. When it’s finished, all the calendars you previously selected should have appeared in your Calendar app.

What else do you like to do, or would like to be able to do on your Windows Phone? Let us know in the comments below!

Downloading times have been cut short and shorter, but we are a typically impatient lot. There’s been a historical trade-off between streaming your films and series, and mustering up the patience for a decent download. With the ability to stream torrent video in full quality, the gap between these two is ever closing, bringing the best of both worlds.

Right now, uTorrent is one of the most prominent torrent clients that carries video streaming capabilities. Sadly, this is still limited to its Windows client. Users of Mac OS X and Linux are left with few alternatives. That is, except LittleShoot.

LittleShoot

LittleShoot requires a small, cross-platform application to be installed as a back-end, but for all intents and purposes, LittleShoot is effectively a BitTorrent client that works directly out of your browser. This carries a number of advantages; not least the cross-platform compatibility when your technology arsenal runs with Mac and Linux, as well as the Windows operating system.

On top of that, LittleShoot is riddled with interesting functionality. One of these features has earned our foremost focus today – torrent video streaming.

Streaming Torrent Video

As mentioned before, streaming video from your torrents is a relatively new niche, and one that has often been limited to Windows users. With the LittleShoot torrent client this is a thing of the past. You’ll have your video stream up and running in no time, regardless of your operating platform.

LittleShoot will automatically open torrent links from the most popular torrent websites. Alternatively, you can open an already downloaded torrent file in LittleShoot by opening it through the back-end application.

When enough of the torrent has been downloaded, you can start streaming the video. An important difference with other torrent streaming clients is that it will attempt to open these videos through your browser. Having a decent video client that can also handle in-browser video (like the DivX Player) is strongly advised. After the torrent has finished, the downloaded files will remain on your computer in your Downloads folder.

Searching In LittleShoot

In theory, LittleShoot can keep all your torrent activity in-house. LittleShoot is, above all, aimed at letting people publish their own torrents with other people. All of these files can then be found by using LittleShoot’s built-in search.

As you may have realized, LittleShoot is not (yet) one of the big torrenting names. As such, the collection of published material remains relatively small. Some files, especially those that might violate copyright, will not be accessible through the built-in search, but will rather have to be added manually. If these restrictions are for better or worse, I’ll leave for you to judge.

Conclusion – Feature Tradeoff

I’ll be honest. On each separate platform, there are torrent clients available that are easier to use and have more advanced feature sets. The most important distinction for me is that LittleShoot appears to be one of the only ways to bring torrent streaming to Mac OS X and Linux platforms. For me, that’s enough to earn a spot in my Applications folder.

That being said, some features are still clearly lacking. Streaming a single video from a torrent collection is not possible. Deleting a torrent from your queue is also harder than it should be. LittleShoot is, in the end, a tradeoff; important torrent streaming functionality versus an interface that’s sometimes lacking.

What do you think? What features of LittleShoot make you want to switch, and what (if anything) keeps you from doing so? Let us hear from you in the comments!

With a large part of today’s applications in the cloud, it should come as no surprise that the choice of a browser is one near as weighted (and as fickle) as the choice of an operating system.

A number of things should be taken into account. This includes the speed of the application itself, the speed of page rendering, but also the general usability of the application. Countless applications with the required technical prowess have nevertheless faded from the spotlight when the usability was lacking and their users were left behind.

I admit, the first time I heard about Sleipnir, I wasn’t impressed. After skimming through the description I passed it off as yet another run of the mill, slightly revised take on web browsing. Ten minutes later, after taking it for a run, I was forced to revise my opinion.

Sleipnir 3 for Mac

Sleipnir is an honestly refreshing take on web browsing. Most of this is thanks to the interface. Sleipnir renders pages about as fast as your average modern web browser, but speeds up your workflow with a slick interface and great ease of use.

This review will only cover the Mac version of Sleipnir. However, the Sleipnir browser family encompasses more than one platform. Its namesakes tend to Windows, iOS and Android as well, and the Sleipnir synchronization agent, Fenrir Pass, can synchronize your bookmarks cross-platform.

Compact Address Bar

One of the first things you’ll notice about Sleipnir is its slick address bar. Well, rather the absence of it. During browsing, the address bar you’ve come to know is collapsed to its base domain, as you can see in the screenshot below.

If you click on this collapsed address, or after pressing cmd + L on your keyboard, the traditional address bar will unfold. Point Sleipnir to a new page and it will collapse again. This keeps it from taking up any unnecessary screen real estate. Also, it looks decidedly pretty.

Polished Tab Management

Have a look at the tab bar. It’s undoubtedly quite different from what you’re used to. Instead of actual ‘tabs’ with page names, Sleipnir shows a succession of screenshots. Hover over one of these tiles with your mouse, and the page name will appear.

Clicking on the grid icon to the left of the tab display (or pressing CMD + ALT + T) takes you to the TiledTab window. This is similar to the tab groups you may know from Firefox. TiledTab is structured according to six tab groups, shown on the bottom of the screen. You can rename and replace these to your heart’s content. One of these groups will show you the currently opened tabs.

Other default groups include Read Later, Research and Shopping. You can drag and drop pages between the different groups, or add new pages altogether. These collections will be preserved in between different browser sections.

Use of these tab groups is intended to replace the idea of having different browser windows open. In fact, it’s not possible to open multiple Sleipnir windows. In general, this works better than expected. It keeps your browsing structured even when opening a very large amount of pages. However, some browser capabilities, like opening two pages side by side are sorely missed.

Touch Gestures

Sleipnir is fitted with a bunch of touch gestures; perfect if you have a multi-touch trackpad. This is what makes the stranger features of the application still feel inherently natural.

With your mouse hovering over the tab views, use two fingers to scroll left or right between a large amount of tabs. If you keep your mouse in the center of the screen while doing this, you can pull over the adjoining tabs, as shown in the screenshot below.

Using two fingers on your trackpad to pinch out will take you to the TiledTab panel. Inversely, pinching in takes you back to the currently selected page. In TiledTab, you can also scroll left and right to switch between different tab groups. I suggest you try out these gestures, even if that’s not normally your cup of tea. It makes Sleipnir a breeze to use.

Do you think these changes are for better or for worse? What browser do you use, and why? Drop a line in the comments, and let us know!

Keeping a multitude of devices in sync is the bane of any technophyle. We have increasingly capable devices that should, in an ideal world, enhance the portability and interchangeability of our data. Yet over time, this data gets inevitably fragmented, simply because the work required to keep all of our devices in sync. This is where SyncMate enters stage. With just one application, you can keep all your devices working perfectly in unison. It’s the only synchronization tool you’ll ever need.

This week, we’re giving away 25 copies of SyncMate Expert worth almost $1000! Find out more about SyncMate Expert and join the giveaway for a chance to win!

SyncMate Expert for Mac OS X

We were happy to host two SyncMate giveaways in the past, Turn Your Mac Into Sync-Central with SyncMate in 2010 and Get In Sync With SyncMate 3 Expert Edition in 2011. This time around, we’re back  with an all-new updated version of SyncMate Expert.

You can use SyncMate to sync your Mac with a pletora of hardware and online services. These include mobile devices like Android, Windows Mobile, Nokia S40 and all iOS devices, like the iPhone, iPod and iPad. But you can also synchronize your Mac with another computer or several online services.

You can schedule your Mac to sync with all of these devices simultaneously and automatically. Most importantly, you can sync any of these devices with each other, through your Mac.

Mobile Synchronization

In previous versions, SyncMate was already able to sync with Android, Windows Mobile and Nokia S40 models. Now, iOS devices have been added to the mix as well, and BlackBerry support is soon to come.

Maintain your contacts, calendars, your photos from iPhoto, or your iTunes library on any of these mobile devices. In case of the iPod, iPhone and iPad, it gets better; using SyncMate, you can now use these devices in conjunction with multiple computers, instead of just one.

If you use an Android, Windows Mobile, or Nokia S40 phone, you can also view and manage your text messages on your computer, or use your computer’s full-sized keyboard to send new messages with ease.

Computer to Computer

SyncMate isn’t limited to mobile devices only. If you have multiple computers, you can keep them working in perfect unison; it doesn’t matter whether that other computer runs on Windows or Mac OS X as well. Add as many computers as you want, and keep your Address Book, iCal, iTunes, Safari and iPhoto in sync.

After hooking up an external disk, you can use it to back up important data from your Mac, or turn the tables around and keep an image of the mounted device safe on your Mac.

Sync With Online Services

If you use your Google account to store your calendar and contacts online, you can synchronize these with your Mac, or through your Mac to your other mobile devices and computers. Dropbox can be used to store data from your Mac, but also to keep files and folders from your Dropbox in sync with other computers and mobile devices.

If you don’t have a Dropbox account yet, don’t fret. Eltima gives all SyncMate users 200 MB for free on their servers. Although this likely won’t suffice for your entire iTunes library, once you sign up for an online storage account you can keep your most precious data safe on Eltima’s servers.

Try the free version of SyncMate here. You can also purchase a copy for just $39.95. Otherwise, if you’d like to win a free copy of SyncMate Expert, join the giveaway.

How do I win a copy?

It’s simple, just follow the instructions.

Step 1: Fill in the giveaway form

Please fill in the form with your real name and email address so that we can get in touch if you are chosen as a winner. Click here if you can’t view the form.

The giveaway code required to activate the form is available from our Facebook page, our Twitter stream and Google+ page.

Step 2: Share!

You’re almost done. Now, all that’s left to do is to share the post!

This giveaway begins now and ends Friday, May 4th. The winners will be selected at random and informed via email.

Spread the word to your friends and have fun!

Interested in sponsoring a giveaway? We’d love to hear from you. Get in touch with us via the form at the bottom of this page.

Browsers have much improved over the past few years. I remember a time when downloading large files in-browser was the chore of legends. Every modern browser now has a fairly decent download manager built in. I must be getting old.

Things have improved, but we’re not there yet. Download resume capabilities have been added in some of these browsers, but more often than not they only work haphazardly. It’s true that you can get around without a download manager, but if you often work with large files, bulk downloads, or if you want to milk your cable for that extra speed and faster downloads, this is where you have to look.

Featured in this article are four great and easy to use (GUI) download managers for Mac OS X. If you like to tinker with the command line, take a look at Angela’s article on Mastering Wget & Learning Some Neat Downloading Tricks. If you’re on a different platform, check out my previous article, The Best Free File Download Managers for Windows, or Justin’s SteadyFlow Simplifies & Manages Your Downloads [Linux].

JDownloader

JDownloader is an extensive platform independent download manager written in Java, and you can also download it for Windows, Linux, or another Java-enabled device with JRE 1.5 or higher. Java is preinstalled on Mac OS X, so you won’t have to worry about that part. JDownloader has support for (unlimited) multi-threaded, and scheduled downloads.

On top of these standard features, JDownloader has a few tricks up the sleeve. JDownloader is pre-configured to support over 100 premium file sharing sites. Just enter your account details in the Premium menu, and you’re good to go. If you want to expand upon the default package, there are a number of add-ons you can install – FlashGot integration, an unarchiving plugin, Growl integration and a web interface, to name a few.

If you want to use JDownloader to download a large batch of files, you should take a look at Craig’s article on How To Extract Links For Mass Image Or File Downloads With JDownloader.

DownThemAll! (Firefox Add-on)

DownThemAll! is not exactly a Mac OS X application. However, this Firefox add-on is one of the reasons I often delegate my downloads to Firefox instead of my usual browser. With this add-on, Firefox becomes a download manager to rival the other applications mentioned in this article. If Firefox is your default browser, all the better!

DownThemAll! is especially perfect for downloading large batches of files. If you open the ‘DownThemAll!’ window, you can scrape all the media from a currently opened webpage, or devise your own filters to scrape other files or URLs. In the manager window, which is shown in the screenshot above, you can add download links manually and manage your speed.

DownThemAll! supports multi-threaded downloads, the number of which you can choose in the settings.

Folx Download Manager

Folx, one of the most popular premium download managers for Mac OS X, has a little brother – a free version. Some of the features you’ll get in the Pro version (RSS support, torrent search) will be missing, but most of the downloading goodness is left intact with some small limitations.

Folx integrates with most popular Mac OS X browsers to catch your links, including Opera, Firefox, Flock and all WebKit browsers like Safari and Google Chrome. It’s one of the most extensive free download managers for Mac OS X.

Folx works like a charm for categorizing downloads using tags or smart groups. Using the free version, you can use up to two connections to the same server, whereas the Pro version supports up to ten. This is obviously the biggest limitation on the free version, but speeds are nevertheless very manageable; I was still able to reach speeds of up to 4 MB/s, which nears my connection’s maximum. You can still limit your download speeds manually, albeit with an old-fashioned upper bound of 1 MB/s.

Check out Jeffry’s full giveaway review from 2011, and his guide on how to Optimize Torrent Downloading on Your Mac with Folx.

What download manager makes the top of your list? Perhaps you even favor a wholly different application! Let us know in the comment what download manager gets your vote, and why.

Image credit: Pixomar / FreeDigitalPhotos

Link shorteners are a dime a dozen. Even Google and StumbleUpon have joined the fray, because a shortened URL doesn’t just look good. They also go a long way to improving the usability of links. Even if you’re not limited by 140 characters, shortened links are easier to remember, and it keep your shares, and those of your readers, uncluttered.

If you have your own website, you can get by with using a popular URL shortener like TinyURL or bit.ly. However, with your own domain, there’s little reason not to set up your very own URL shortener. Hosting your own URL shortener has a number of advantages for any site owner. Apart from the added control, it’s also a matter of branding. You’re constantly building on the image of your site, and your own URL’s make up a nifty part of that image. It adds recognizability and helps non-frequenters remember the name of your site.

These self-hosted shorteners fall into two broad categories. With a private shortener, only the owner of the website is able to create new short URL’s – this is ideal for a content-based system, like a blog, a forum, or a company website. Whether a gimmick, or an integral part of your website, everyone can use a public shortener to compress additional URL’s, effectively creating your own TinyURL or bit.ly lookalike.

YOURLS

In both the cases outlined above, YOURLS is your go-to guy. This set of PHP scripts allows you to quickly and easily install a customizable URL shortener on your website, complete with bookmarklets and WordPress integration. We’ll walk you through the process.

Server Requirements

We will assume you already have your own server space. If not, take a look at James’ explanation on The Various Forms Of Website Hosting, the results of our Poll: Which Is The Best Budget Web Host?, or Danny’s guide on How To Set Up An Apache Web Server In 3 Easy Steps for a locally hosted server.

When you’re picking a potential candidate, keep these YOURLS server requirements in mind:

• A server with mod_rewrite enabled.
• PHP support (version 4.3 or higher).
• MySQL database support (version 4.1 or higher).

Step 1: Download & Extract YOURLS

Download the latest version of YOURLS and extract it in a place you can easily reach on your computer.

In this folder, copy ‘/includes/config-sample.php’ to ‘/user/config.php‘.

Step Two: Fill Out Your Server Details

MySQL will need a database to work. If your server meets the requirements, you can usually create one in your host’s administration panel with a few clicks of the mouse. This is also where you’ll be able to find the database name, URL and access credentials.

The server host field can usually remain at ‘localhost‘, unless otherwise specified by your web host. If you’re stuck, look at your host’s help files, or contact support.

You’ll also need the URL of your website. Mind you, this is not necessarily your root domain name. If you’ve already installed something on your root domain (like a blog), you’ll have to put YOURLS in a sub-folder. The path of this sub-folder will determine the URL of your YOURLS site. For instance, if you install YOURLS in a folder /s, the URL of your YOURLS site would be http://your_domain_name.com/s .

Open the file you’ve just copied ( /user/config.php ), in your favorite text or code editor. You can use Notepad or TextEdit on Windows or Mac OS X respectively. Now, replace the corresponding fields in this file with the database credentials and the URL you just found and hit save. Scrolling down, you can find a batch of other options in this configuration file. You can customize these to your liking, or stay with the default configuration.

Step Three: Upload The Files To Your Server

Next, we’ll upload the unzipped YOURLS files to your server. You can use an FTP client (again, getting the FTP credentials from your web host), or use your web host’s online file manager to do so. You’ll have to upload these files to the folder you specified as the YOURLS installation URL in the previous step. This will likely be in ‘/www/your_folder‘ or ‘/public_html/your_folder‘.

You can now point your web browser of choice to your_domain_name.com/your_folder/admin/ to finish the configuration.

Step Four: WordPress Integration & Other Plugins (Optional)

If you’re using YOURLS in conjunction with WordPress, the fun doesn’t have to stop there. YOURLS has released a WordPress plugin that allows you to integrate your URL shortener with your blog. Using this plugin, you can automatically shorten the links of your newly published blog posts, and even post them directly to twitter.

However, you aren’t limited to WordPress. On the YOURLS site, you’ll be find an ever growing list of plugins. You can use these to integrate with Google Analytics, Tumblr, or automatically generate QR codes, just to name a few.

Where are you going to use your personal URL shortener, and how? Let us know in the comments below!

Playing games can be a lot of fun. But why stop there? If you’re familiar with a computer and willing to invest a little time, you can start making your own games. Even if you haven’t programmed a day in your life, you can start today.

This is the second installment of a three-part series. With each article, the tools we review will be a notch more difficult, the learning curve will get a little steeper, but the creative possibilities will increase even more.

In part one we saw how to create your own text-based game, platformer, or first person shooter in the blink of an eye, often with mere drag-and-drop procedures. Those tools already allowed you to tell your own interactive story, but your influence on gameplay mechanics remained limited.

This week features tools of intermediate complexity. You’ll be able to determine what’s in the game, but also how the individual gameplay elements interact. To do this, we’re going to use object event-interactions and scripting.

GameMaker (Mac + Windows)

GameMaker is one of the most popular game making suites in its league. It was featured in Jonathan Bennett’s gaming round-up in early 2010. What makes this application the highlight of this bunch is its versatility and its compatibility. GameMaker is the only of this week’s tools that runs on both Mac OS X and Windows. Moreover, the paid version is able to export to an even wider array of platforms, including iOS and Android.

The idea is simple. You add a number of elements to your game, including backgrounds, sounds and objects. The behavior of these objects in your game can be scripted by specifying events and accompanying actions. Consider the screenshot above. On the event ‘Create’ (i.e. on initialization), the object will run through the actions outlined on the right side column. These actions can be nested and include conditionals (if ‘this’, do ‘that’) and control flow statements (while ‘this’, do ‘that’).

In fact, these actions serve as a good introduction to a programmer’s way of thinking. Most programming applications are structured the same way. This allows you to practice with a limited subset of possible interactions, and without being bothered with the exact syntax.

Although you can build your entire game by tweaking object properties, you can expand upon these default templates by creating your own scripts. These scripts use GameMaker Language (GML) which resembles Java in syntax. You can also read and learn from, or customize the scripts that are included with GameMaker and available online.

YoYo Games, the company behind GameMaker, offers a variety of resources online, including a number of tutorials. These tutorials can help you get started with GameMaker.

RPG Toolkit (Windows)

RPG Toolkit focuses on a smaller subset of games, but does so very well. The tools in this game creation suite have been honed for the past 10 years to help you deliver an extensive 2D role playing game.

These two-dimensional games are modeled around tile-based graphics and animations. However, RPG Toolkit leaves you free to use your own programmed visuals in certain parts of the game interface. Most importantly, perhaps, RPG Toolkit profits from its elaborate community. If you’re stumped with a question about your game, or even if you want to enjoy a discussion on game methodology, you can always turn to the forums.

The editor in the RPG Toolkit will help you create anything you need for your game, including new sprites, effects and in-game characters. On the website you’ll find countless utilities, plugins to and pre-made programming snippets to use in your game.

Contrary to GameMaker, RPG Toolkit relies much more heavily on its scripting language, called RPG Code. This language will be vital to make a decent RPG. Unlike the other two applications mentioned in this article, this is nothing you can lightly skip.

To get started,  download the application and take a look at the tutorials section on the RPG Toolkit website. There you’ll find what information you need concerning the editor, coding, graphics and audio of your game. If you’re looking to start a big project, try the forums to find fellow enthusiasts to work on it with you.

3D Rad (Windows)

Like the name implies, 3D Rad let’s you create your own 3D games on your Windows computer. It adheres to a most interesting methodology. Using 3D Rad, you will design your games around a design perspective, often scripting the object interactions as you go along.

You can use to 3D editor to render your own 3D models, or import these from an external source. If you don’t want to be bothered with 3D models, perhaps 3D Rad isn’t the application for you. After all, even if you use pre-made 3D models, most of your work will be spent in combining these different parts, using working joints, wheels, and a variety of go-betweens to create your own physics sandbox.

Like GameMaker, you orchestrate the 3D Rad gameplay without ever writing a line of code. For the most part, you’ll be specifying object relationships and interactions using the object dialogs. By defining these visual relationships, you are in fact calling on wide variety of built-in scripts, including artificial intelligence scripts. If you wish to go beyond this initial level of functionality, 3D Rad also allows you to define your own scripts to use in the game. In either case, to get started, check out the wide variety of tutorials on the documentation pages.

Which of these applications caught your eye? Do you have any other suggestions? Share your ideas and experiences in the comments below!

Image Credit: Idea go / Free Digital Photos